


Everywhere to me

by Zelara



Category: Cal Leandros - Rob Thurman, Trick of Light - Rob Thurman, Trickster - Rob Thurman
Genre: Empathy, M/M, Pining, Telepathy, supernatural powers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-04
Updated: 2016-07-04
Packaged: 2018-07-20 00:55:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7384573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zelara/pseuds/Zelara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Girls and dating and one night stands come up one night and Griffin wonders when they will be a thing of the past. Griffin has been prepared for years.</p>
<p>Picks up directly after Chapter 1 of Trick of Light.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everywhere to me

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to go ahead and put this under the Cal Leandros category as well simply because I didn't want it to be utterly lost in its own category. And besides, anyone who has read the newest Cal book has met one of the Triskster characters already. ^.^
> 
> I'm appalled at the lack of Trickster fanfiction and decided a while ago to write something to help spark people's interest in the series and to let the gals—and I suppose guys—like myself that dislike the cliched female characters that overpopulate the fiction universe know that they'll love the Trickster novels, not despite Trixa, but BECAUSE of Trixa. She's seriously awesome—the latest of only three female characters that I've ever truly liked. You'll also love the boys; Zeke, Griffin and Leo, as well as others. They're classical Rob Thurman boys, though I can't say as any of them can be related to any of her other guys like Niko or Cal. Trixa is also entirely her own girl and can't be compared to Rob's other female characters. I like Trixa a thousand times better than Promise, Delilah or Ariel. Trixa is a bad, bad girl and her devious little secret will make your head spin. But Trixa isn't my focus here so you'll have to meet her in Trick of Light for yourself.
> 
> As a note for anyone who—naughty, naughty—is reading this before reading Trick of Light, Zeke is a telepath and Griffin is an empath and they grew up together in the same foster homes as kids, which I acknowledge may cause some confusion for those not expecting it due to the way I wrote it.
> 
> That said, here's my introduction of my favorite pair of boys, fangirl to fellow fangirl/fanboy.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

When I first read that line in high school, I took it to heart. I didn't then and I still don't now care about my supposed “influence on society,” but I did understand the concept of clothes making an impression and telling people just how you were to be treated. I decided that someday I'd be in a position to dress like the man I wanted to be; a man who you would never guess had grown up in stained, oversized hand-me-downs and been thankful for that much. A kid dressed like an unwanted street urchin got treated like an unwanted street urchin and if that had been galling when we'd lived in foster homes, it was a blessing when we'd later been on the run. A blessing that had still chafed even as we'd melted into the filthy alleys of Las Vegas to avoid pursuit...but to keep Zeke safe and by my side, I could stand to be a little chafed.

That was years ago though and I had since been able to achieve my wish. I bought clothes like most people bought food; namely, whenever the mood struck—and it struck often. I did enough shopping to warrant my walk-in closet's recent expansion and the occasional overflow of my work clothes into Zeke's smaller but also less occupied built-in. Only occasionally though; my clothes inevitably end up double bagged or dumped into the fire pit of a bunch of homeless if trash day was too far away. Trixa likes to tease me about the cost of maintaining my wardrobe when so much of it gets turned to smoke or buried in a far off landfill.

Yes, it would be more cost efficient to wear my “work” clothes more often, but I worked hard to afford to dress how I wanted and the financial loss is a minor factor compared to that victory. Clothes make the man, after all.

Of course, I'd bet Mark Twain never had to scrub demon blood out of his three hundred dollar Asolo hiking boots.

Besides that, Zeke has always been the only one who I've ever given a damn about my influence on and Zeke doesn't care to tell the difference between Wal-mart brand jeans and Cavalli works of denim art.

“I'm bored,” Zeke sulked behind me, feeling cheated, no doubt, at having been denied a good hunt after getting his blood pumping behind the bar. Zeke was the first out the door pinning the demon, but Trixa had been the one to put a slug through its head, splattering inky colored blood all over the both of us. Unfortunately it came out of clothes about as easily as black ink, thus the expense of keeping up my wardrobe.

And dammit if I hadn't just gotten that jacket.

“It's too late to go demon hunting, Zeke,” I said tiredly, “You've got to report to Eden House at 5:30 tomorrow. Goodman wanted to talk to you, remember?”

Truthfully I was worried about that one. Zeke and Jackson Goodman, second in command at Eden House Las Vegas, did not get along and it was usually up to me to act as a buffer between the two, hell, between Zeke and just about the entire rest of the world. But I had been specifically dis-invited by Goodman when he'd called earlier in the day. He wanted to talk to Zeke and Zeke alone. I couldn't help but feel a bit anxious, or at least I would if I wasn't suddenly so exhausted with our front door finally in sight.

Zeke obviously picked up on some trace of my thoughts because the next thing I knew, he was fishing through my ruined jacket's pocket for the keys and saying nonchalantly,

“Jackie just doesn't want you to interfere when he yells at me for the thing in the training room.”

That stopped me mid yawn as I asked warily, “What thing in the training room?”

“New guy,” he shrugged as if that explained it all and I had a sinking feeling that I thought I now knew why Kingston, the proverbial “new guy,” didn't have any eyebrows and had flinched when he we passed him in the hall yesterday. And here I'd thought he was just a jumpy weirdo with a bad wax job. I should have known better.

The keys jingled in the lock for a moment and we were admitted to our house, the slums giving way to a sleekly modern style bachelor pad as green eyes glanced back at my sigh, suddenly unsure, but I shook my head and asked instead, “Are you still hungry? We've got pasta leftover from lunch.” Knowing Zeke as I did, I knew that if he was hungry and I didn't feed him, I'd be awoken later to the smell of burnt...whatever he found in the fridge that he deemed edible. Only give him a few minutes to “cook” it and it wouldn't qualify as anything but bio-hazardous.

He considered for a moment but eventually waved it off.

“That stuff from whats-her-name is still in there isn't it? The chicken? That only takes a couple minutes in the microwave doesn't it?”

He walked away from me to browse the fridge, missing entirely my frown at his description of the shy blonde girl from the mall who had a raging crush on him. She'd made seemingly every effort to catch his attention every time we passed the mall fast food establishment she worked at for two months until desperation had made her ask him out point blank. The surprise and happiness at his easy acquiescence had turned to frustrated attempts to recapture his attention a week later when she realized that he was up for one-night stands and absolutely nothing else. It wasn't intentional cruelty that had us going back to eat at her little French/Italian restaurant, just that it had been a favorite place of mine long before there was any of the drama that now tended to hang around us there and Zeke knew it.

It didn't help that he saw nothing wrong with one night stands and, at least in that area of his life, I couldn't bring myself to try and temper his black and white world view. I would be the first to admit that my reluctance to educate him on the social niceties of dating—and civilly “breaking up”—were entirely selfish as well as unjust to him and the women that he slept with once and then moved on from. Most of them either understood from the start, or they took the hint quickly enough. She refused both options and thus it was with childish vengeance that I didn't explain to my partner that accepting her specially made meals that she made special trips in order to catch us on our way to Eden House early in the morning definitely counted as stringing her along. It made me sick with myself for letting my...jealousy get the better of not only myself and Zeke, but some poor clueless girl. Trixa would probably kick my ass if she knew what a jerk I was being.

Apparently my thoughts kept me occupied longer than I had assumed and I shook my head to clear the gathering self-loathing that frequently came with said thoughts as Zeke came back to me, fork and Styrofoam plate in hand, the contents of which steamed ominously. Or maybe it was just my imagination. He speared a piece of breaded chicken and munched thoughtfully on it before holding another out to me, which I unthinkingly accepted only to have my stomach violently roll as the unique flavor of heavily salted, barbequed teriyaki chicken blossomed on my tongue.

Zeke continued to stare at the plate of chicken, copper brows furrowed, and I could practically hear the thought as it ran through his head as if I were the telepath in our partnership.

What the fuck?

“Maybe,” I choked out with some difficulty around my revolted taste buds, “we should avoid her from now on. Somehow I doubt that was an accidental mix up in the kitchen.”

Brows still drawn together, now in offense as his suspicions were validated, Zeke gave the most minute of nods, walked to the garbage and upturned the plate into it with a bit more drama than the situation probably called for. His rare moment of silliness made me want to smile, though I resisted—after all it was my inaction that had led to the scene at all and however much I was relieved that it had finally come, I still felt like trash about it.

“I never asked her to make them,” he grumbled, “She could have just stopped making them instead of ruining good chicken.”

And that was all that it came down to with Zeke, no hurt feelings at a girl lashing out, just annoyance that what had looked like a good meal had been wasted because of it. That broke through my ill-feelings and I did smile.

“I'll warm up the pasta,” I decided, a good mood suddenly taking me as I brushed past him into the kitchen. Not even the reminder of my ruined jacket and shirt as I shed them directly into the garbage atop the foul remnants of a girlish crush was enough to steal the smile from my mouth. Within a few minutes I was serving up the simple pasta Alfredo that had been our leisurely lunch at home between jobs that afternoon and we sat at the bar stools in the kitchen to save the couch from the rest of our demon-splattered selves.

We ate quietly, but that simply allowed my mind to drift back to their earlier haunting grounds. A spying glance at Zeke showed nothing but an emotionless countenance and so I concentrated and tried to lightly touch on his mental shields to get an idea of his current state.

I wasn't nearly as subtle as I thought apparently because the moment my gift touched his shields they dropped away into nothingness. Ever since we discovered our powers as teens, mine developing only a few months earlier than his, Zeke never tried to hide anything from me. His emotions were there for my perusal anytime I wished and in those first months I had all but submerged myself in them. He was a rock of calm in the emotional hell that I discovered foster homes to be breeding grounds for. Thirteen years old, Zeke could still barely function without detailed instructions on the basics of daily life and routines, but it was me who needed the most support at that time. I would wake from an almost coma-like sleep brought about from the absolute mental exhaustion that not knowing how to shut out the depression and anger that an entire houseful of foster kids generated even in their sleep resulted in and I would lay completely inert, unable to move until they had cleared.

When I confided in an outwardly unaffected Zeke what my strange problem was, he dragged me out into the yard that night after everyone else was asleep and we slept in the separate laundry shed of the house we were living in at the time. For all his external calm, my new abilities let me see just how worried he was for me and how much he didn't want to leave me in the shed by myself, but thought that he needed to so as not to plague me with his own emotions. Unlike the others though, his were the gentlest of whispers, perhaps because of his own sleeping talents, and were more soothing than anything, like listening to a gentle rain. Our foster mother threw a fit the next morning because were were missing and set the other kids to finding us until someone came into the laundry room to start their morning chores. We were informed in no uncertain terms that the next time she found us missing from our beds we would both be beaten within an inch of our lives. But that one night was enough to show me the sanctuary that Zeke's mind held, and he didn't deny me it.

Two months later Zeke's own powers began to awaken, but the ability to shut them off seemed to be standard package and he was able to walk me through shutting out my own. It was only afterward that I actually learned how to reach for a person's emotions, as a stab of loneliness in the following days had me wishing for the soothing whispers that I had made my home for the past two months. Zeke 'heard' that wish immediately and didn't think twice about banishing his shield. I was more careful of what I let Zeke hear after that as I refused to allow my whims to take advantage of his loyalty and trust.

Of course, it wasn't an issue again for years. Zeke's powers seemed to afforded him a lot of maneuverability and he quickly worked out that he could block out the rest of the world while still allowing me access to him and vice versa once he showed me the trick. It wasn't until Eden House and our sudden contact with demons that could worm through those tiny holes, that the impenetrable shields made a comeback.

I stood suddenly, the wave of emotion from Zeke as he allowed it to unwrap from himself letting me see all too clearly that I was alone in my uncertainty and guilt. I allowed a half-formed thought to float free of my mind and was answered instantly. She was told the score from the beginning, no encouragement given that it would change, and thus she was wholly responsible for not accepting it. There was no guilt because there was no action to feel guilt for.

Oddly, that line of reasoning did help, though of course I had other things to feel guilty for about that encounter which I did not wish to make Zeke aware of, but it seemed that my inability to let the subject go had piqued Zeke's interest. Damn it.

“You don't think I should have ignored her?” he asked curiously, one eyebrow sliding up in a bland show of incredulity. After all, he wasn't interested in her beyond sex, why would he have pretended otherwise?

“No, no,” I shook my head hurriedly, not wanting him to get the wrong idea, “I just wonder if there wasn't some way of avoiding all this in the first place.”

Other than turning her down in the first place, a treacherous part of me grumbled and I had to smother the thought before Zeke could hear it.

“You done?” I asked while reaching for his empty plate, suddenly impatient to move on from the topic before I got myself in trouble. Lingering on the subject was only going to make me irritable and my shields more porous until Zeke would have to be blind not to see the truth behind my moodiness.

And that was something I  _never_ wanted him to be aware of. Or at least not unless he already returned those feelings.

Seven years ago I had woken to a startling realization that had me blushing in shame as I looked at the then 17 year old boy sleeping on the floor of Trixa's storeroom beside me. The dream was muddled, a supreme lack of information for my teenage hormones to feed on making it little more than a scene of messy kisses and uncertain touches. Despite that, I'd found myself more aroused simply by the thought of Zeke being the other participant of those kisses than I had been even the first time I'd had sex with a girl. All because Zeke had asked what sex was like the evening before as we had settled into sleep. I had gamely tried to explain but in the end had given up and just told Zeke it was too hard to explain and I was too tired to try. Then came the dream in which Zeke asked his question again, but this time I pulled him close and told him that I would  _show_ him.

Disgusted with myself for even contemplating wrecking what was left of Zeke's innocence for my own pleasure, that morning I strongly encouraged Zeke to find a girl and try it out himself. Anything to put some distance between us in that regard. I wouldn't allow Zeke to catch a hint of the desires his questions had awoken, even as I quietly despised the pretty brunette young woman that took Zeke's hand a few days later and led him away.

Never one to waste an opportunity though, I promptly walked to the public library and just as quietly slipped into the far back to conduct my research. The miniscule selection had briefly worried me, but a helpful nudge from the clearly embarrassed Librarian's assistant that had found me there showed me an area of the fiction section that was much more helpful when referenced against the clinical books for accuracy. I would never seek out or encourage Zeke in any way, but if the red-head came to  _me_ one day, I was damn well going to know how to do something more than kiss and gracelessly grope him though his jeans.

Of course, now seven years later, my green eyed partner was no closer to wanting anything more out of our partnership than he had as a teenager, but thankfully he also wasn't up to relationships with anyone else. I don't know how I would have handled him having a girlfriend. It was hard enough just to know he was casually having sex with other people. I can't say it has gotten easier over the years, if anything it has been more like a wound never allowed to heal for all the constant scraping.

None the less, it was better than him discovering my desires and being plagued with the idea that he was simply following what he knew I wanted, rather than it being something he wanted. He would never see it that way, but for me it would be as if I were raping him and that would be forever one of my greatest fears.

My hands had a nearly indiscernible shake as I rinsed our plates in the sink, my back to Zeke. I knocked the faucet all the way hot and let the sting banish the thoughts I had already failed to cast out on my own. By the time I turned around from patting dry and replacing the dishes in the cupboards, I figured I had myself pretty much back under control.

I couldn't have been more wrong.

Done eating now, Zeke had apparently decided that he'd had enough of his sticky clothes and was already shirtless and working on unbuttoning his jeans. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, nor exactly wanting him to  _stop_ , I stayed quiet except to grab the black tee-shirt laying in a pathetic lump on the counter top and chucking it in the trash atop my own clothes. He stepped out of the black jeans and held them up speculatively, his brows furrowed as he obviously tried to decide if it was worth the effort to scrub the flecks of demon blood out of them by hand in the tub. I had a strict 'No demon blood in the washer' policy, seeing as the stuff was closer in consistency to tar than human blood and had a way of always managing to clog the washer, no matter how little of the stuff there was in there.

Zeke evidently decided he'd rather buy another pair than spend an hour or more scrubbing his jeans because before I knew it, black denim was flying past me into the trash. Knocking a stray leg completely into the can, I swallowed as he knelt down to grab his boots before rising with an effortless flex of muscled calves and thighs.

He didn't go far, just close enough to his open bedroom to toss both his shoes in as he rounded the couch and sat down cross-legged with his gun in hand. Thankfully my own jeans had been spared the splatter of Trixa's shotgun blast and I didn't have to strip down any further than I already was to join him there. I silently pulled out the supplies for cleaning our guns and knives and we went about our post-fight ritual.

It was one of the few things that he had learned with minimal difficulty; guns and how to keep them in perfect shape. Not at all like the less 'interesting' things I tried to teach him. It wasn't that he didn't want to learn, simply that in his mind they were so mind-numbingly boring that they flowed over him like water off a duck's back. Other things simply made so little sense to him that I might as well have been speaking Greek. You couldn't maim the gardener for setting—admittedly cruel—gopher traps and then fantasizing in his own sick little mind about it? There was such a thing as 'excessive force' when dealing with muggers? Marching up to a seemingly innocent man and breaking his arm for mentally masturbating over a bunch of kids wasn't okay? Bewildered didn't begin to cover it.

Zeke was chewing his lip, thinking, and I waited warily for the inevitable return to our previous discussion. Instead he surprised me by dumping his gun down on the coffee table and getting up, dragging me along with him.

“You're tired,” he said bluntly and took my gun out my hands to lay it beside his own, “Go to bed, these can wait til morning.”

I didn't have to be asked twice and I nodded but pushed him in the direction of the bathroom.

“Alright, you hit the shower first though, I'm probably gonna take a while.”

He agreed without a fuss and I waited until the door shut and the water turned on to fall back on the couch with an exhausted exhale.

I was in trouble.

I wasn't under any delusions to believe that he'd missed how bothered I still was, nor did I think he'd have let it go if he hadn't known just how worn-out I already was. Whether it was ever visited again, I knew this discussion wasn't going to be relegated out of his mind any time soon and he was probably already chewing on it right now. It was pure wishful thinking to believe otherwise.

Which is precisely why, when he exited the bathroom not ten minutes later, I nearly ran him over getting in and locking the door behind me. I could only hope that a night's rest and a busy day tomorrow would effectively wipe out any desire on his part to rehash this evening at a later time. For a moment I was glad he'd been called alone for a talk with Goodman, it might just overshadow tonight's weirdness and if I was lucky we might even get a mission.

As promised, I lingered in the shower, making sure there wasn't the smallest trace of tar-like demon blood in my blond hair before starting on anything else. It was easily half an hour before I left the bathroom and the house was dark by then. Zeke's door was open though, as usual he had no use for his own privacy. Clad only in a towel I leaned into the room to see if he was already asleep. He was.

I rested against the door frame watching his bare chest rise and fall, just wanting to gaze at him for a few moments without arousing suspicion by my further strange behavior. It was getting harder and harder to keep my thoughts platonic and to ensure he didn't catch any embarrassing stray thoughts from me. It had me almost rethinking my resolve to not drop him any hints. Surely just the smallest, most innocent mental picture just to inspire the idea couldn't hurt, could it?

No. I was shaking the idea away even before it was finished. If he came to me, it would be because  _he_ desired me, not because he thought he was giving me what I wanted. I was relatively sure that once the idea struck him, he wouldn't be embarrassed by it or keep it quiet. It wasn't in his nature to be uncertain or stew on something that he could just confront openly. 

And until then, I  _was_ going to keep my peace.

Despite that, I couldn't resist quietly creeping up to the bed, nor did I allow myself to second guess the impulse to lean over and kiss the corner of his mouth with the barest of whispers, “Zeke, when will you realize that you're killing me here?” And then I backed off, all but fleeing out into the hallway and into my own room, heart hammering in my chest over my own stupid audacity. Only then, safely out of sight of my 'crime' did I let my senses stretch out to confirm that he really was safely out like a light and I hadn't just fucked up my own resolve. What I felt allowed me to relax into an artless fall into bed. He was deep, deep asleep, too far out of it even for a whisper to make it into his unconscious mind.

I was saved by Zeke's ability to drop off into a deep sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, but that didn't mean I could let myself off the hook. It had been stupid to tempt fate like that and all I'd ended up accomplishing was to further torment myself, all while moving the bar up for how disgustingly brazen I could be.

Digging the heels of my palms into my eyes, I groaned in despair at how much more punishing I'd just made it for myself.

“Please let Goodman have a mission for us tomorrow,” I begged the night one last time before pulling the sheets over myself and setting the alarm for a half hour earlier than usual so I could hopefully have some extra time in the morning to get another shower before Zeke was up.

I had a feeling I was going to need it.


End file.
